Welcome Back
by ThreeGoodLucks
Summary: This is probably a cliche plot, but...: Sasuke returns from who-knows-where after a VERY long time.  Why don't you just read it?  It's hard to explain.  Reviews and constructive criticism are welcome :3


When Uchiha Sasuke returned back to Konoha, the Leaf Village, he was in shreds, covered in his own blood and sent to the hospital without a question on who the heck he was or why he was in the condition he was in. When he finally did tell the caring nurse his name, she dropped the clipboard she had been holding and stared at him as if he were a specter. She quickly called up the desk in the front and said something about the Hokage's wishes and who had just brought himself back. After hearing this news, Uzumaki Naruto flew into Sasuke's hospital room with Haruno Sakura by his side. She had streams of translucent tears dripping all the way down her lovely face and rushed over to Sasuke's bed after standing in the doorway dumbstruck, hugging him with unbelievable strength, crying out curses at first, then blessings, and ending with nothing but heart-felt sobs. They chatted for a good two hours and then, after she left the room due to an urgent request by the medical team for the development of an antidote of some sort, Sasuke waved Naruto over to the fold-up chair sitting beside his bed, and he inquired him.

Sasuke:

"Naruto... let me ask a question I believe to be disrupting my train of thought; my mind will not slow down to rest until an answer is given... Was that girl not the one who was obsessed with my presence and desperately wanted to be accepted? Yes, I remember, she stared at me for hours on end and couldn't care less about your feelings for her. Sakura, was it not? Wasn't she one of the many that used to trail my solitary shadow around, hoping to be looked at? Blushing when she caught me gazing, anywhere but, at her? Is that not the girl who was day-dreaming each day of being held in my arms? She couldn't have cared less for you if there was any other love in her hungry heart, the one that beat a million times per minute when I would walk into her sight. What has happened, Naruto? What have you branded onto her brain, to make her shed tears at first, and then leave with a simple nod of the head when I was announced to be back here? Who has she turned- no. What have you turned her into?"

Naruto thought closely about the one plain question plaguing his dear friend's mind, the question that was causing what seemed to be an incredible amount of distress among the once blackened and charred heart that now, kept a steady and lively beat beneath the battered skin wrapped in clean, sterile bandages. He perused quickly through the possible answers he could give... from easy and simply-put ones that hardly told the answer at all, to a hard, extremely detailed and even disguised replies that would hold back the troubles that Sakura and he had gone through to get this man back where he belonged. However, when his sunny face gazed back at his friends confused and hurt one, Naruto's oceanic eyes appeared to dance while a solemn and smug frown took over the smile that had once dominated his expression. Tell the truth. That was what he answered back with. His choice was to tell the truth, and that was all... no matter how stupid it sounded, or how much it might hurt Sasuke.

Naruto:

"Sasuke, it is truly great to see you back where you belong again. I have to admit that it's a bit of a downer to think that you actually might've had a heart to give to this girl you speak of. However, if you look closely, you will see what I have seen for so long now that it hardly crosses my mind anymore. That 'girl' you keep rambling on and on about is nothing but a strong, in more ways than you could imagine, and nothing less than capable, woman now. A woman who has overcome the nights of terror and sadness that engulfed her delicate soul when... here. Let me tell you a story. A story about two young individuals, a boy and a girl. We'll start off with the point. The boy left the village. The girl loved him, you see, and she followed him around, day after day, like a little lost puppy, begging desperately for a home. But this boy never gave her what she desired, and instead, he did what she found to be both unthinkable and unspeakable. The boy left the village, and even when she cried out to him, he kept going. Turns out the boy returned countless years later, but he is no longer the selfish child he used to be back then. A man... yes that's what he is. Though what kind of man is beyond my own knowledge... I truly believe he will be saddened to find that the girl he once knew is no longer wasting her precious time waiting, wondering, and watching for him... You see, for many years, the girl looked out her window each night under the starry sky, to see if the boy would come back to her, even if he had never acknowledged her presence. But, there's a part of this story that is the most important of all, yet also the most foolish, if you think about it in the way that I do now. Let me explain. You must understand that there was another boy, one who was a trouble-maker, a young adolescent with an unknown, yet apparently bad past. He was seen as a bane, a road-block to the Leaf Village, and no one liked him or cared to say who and what he really was. Adults told their precious children to avoid him at all costs. Yet he lived with it. He was teased, made fun of, and looked down upon by the other children around him. Yet he took it. This child wanted to be the best in the Village. Not because of selfish greed, or even the power of being a leader. He wanted people to acknowledge him for who he REALLY was. Feelings and all. Going back, this boy loved the girl, and it was quite an obvious fact. Unfortunately, the girl could see no one but the other boy, the one who later abandoned the Leaf. So, the boy who loved the girl waited. For a long time, he showed off, waiting for her to realize he existed. He even did stupid, foolish, childish things in order to grab her sparkling emerald eyes. Yes, she turned her head one day and looked, but was annoyed with him and sent him off. Then, the boy that the girl cared SO much for left without a note, not even a word of goodbye, and by the next week, he was considered a rogue ninja. The boy who loved her, saw that the girl was deeply upset and she couldn't seem to get the tears to stop falling past her rosy cheeks. The boy did everything he could. In fact, he promised the girl, promised a promise he knew he could never break, and he went looking for the boy that she loved...the one the boy detested for being able to grab her attention and not even considering the fact that she would do anything for him...anything. Night and day, the boy searched, and he came back from that mission empty-handed. A year later, that boy went out to train to get the other boy back, putting off his dream of being Hokage for a long time, in order to see the girl truly smile again. In the time span of three years, the boy came back as a young man, but he was still a child on the inside, and the promise to the girl was still on his shoulders, though he carried it no sign of ill will. But nonetheless, he met back up with the girl, now a striking ninja, and he renewed their friendship once again. Every mission, every SINGLE mission, the boy and the girl would search desperately for clues, hidden secrets and such to help them find the boy they had lost. But the boy had turned to the dark to gain power, and by then, nothing they could say or do would bring him back to them. When they found him, they would just lose his trail, and once more be thrown into nothingness, grappling for a secure hold on whom they had grown up to love. One day, the young man, the one who was in love with her, turned to the girl and said, 'I don't know if you like me, or if you ever will. I don't really care to hear if you don't, but just tell me this one thing. Just one, tell the truth, please. Will you always hate, or be annoyed with my presence, with every miniscule speck of your entire living soul?' The girl gave no answer back in words, for something like that cannot be answered with a swift nod of the head, yes or no. Instead, she laughed and walked away, but not without ruffling his dandelion pigmented hair. The boy gazed after her, watching as she went. The beauty in her smile, which had been gone before, was so comforting now that it seemed like it had never left. This one, this seemingly insignificant moment in time, told the tale of how the girl, who loved the boy that never returned, became a woman in the eyes of men. It also told the story of how a young boy changed the way he thought, the clock inside him regained an unfamiliar ticking, letting him know it would work. Years later, when the lost boy returned home as a man, to a couple of adults he had never seen change, he questions the man about his relationship with the girl he used to know. The man will answer back with no hate, no anger. It's irony, I know. He will say, 'When her heart was broken, I glued it back together. When she broke down into tears, I'd sit by her side and try to fix her. I'd polish her up and lend her my sympathy, promising to bring you back. In the end, you brought yourself back into our world and she was overjoyed. But I have earned her love, and that will never change.' What he won't tell the man sitting in front of him now, is that there will always be a part of her heart that her lover cannot reach. A part of her heart has fallen in, with no hopes of repair, and in its rubble lays the love for the boy, who came back one summer day as a man, who was surprised to find himself in the caring hand of Konoha's Hokage, who remembered him as a friend."

With that, Naruto stood up and walked to the wooden framed door separating the quiet hallway from Sasuke's hospital room. He strode towards the copper coat hanger and grabbed the cloak he had come in with, a fine specimen of beautiful handiwork and craftsmanship, colored orange with black flames licking at the writing on the back. If Sasuke had looked more carefully at that writing, he might've made out the short yet important word, 'Hokage' in bold large print. Uzumaki Naruto grinned back at his team-mate with the same smile he had had for many years. With that, he twisted the handle on the door and made his way out into the narrow winding hall. He closed the door and stood there; hand still on the metal knob, thinking of what he had said. His grin had faded into a frown. Then, in the corner of his sapphire eyes, a flicker of movement turned his head. A child, with remarkable resemblance to him, walked up and practically asked for his hand. Naruto smiled, and turned away from the room he had just come out from and he let his fingers fall into the fine blonde roots of the child's hair. The boy looked up and laughed, his green eyes twinkling with happiness and delight. And then the child asked a question, catching Naruto by surprise.  
>"Is that the man who you've told me about a million times? The one you have been searching for all these years?"<p>

The boy looked at the man with a curious glance. Naruto opened his mouth, letting yet another answer fall through.

"Yes, a friend of mine, that's the man... but why do you ask?"

The boy only shook his head, smiling as he grabbed Naruto's hand, entwining his fingers with the Hokage's and leading him down the empty hall towards the front desk. A fondness reached Naruto's lips and pulled them back into smile of their own again. For so many years he had been searching, hoping, to win Sakura's heart. In the end, he had figured out just before Sasuke came back, it was really the thread of fate that had led them to where they stood now. It had gotten tangled with Sasuke's and Sakura's and now it was free again, weaving its red body away from the anger of the past and bringing it to a new start, a hope for the future. This was what he had been striving to reach, he realized, all along. And all this lifelong knowledge came, with the simple, innocent touch of his child's tiny hand.


End file.
